Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan

19 quotes

Few American authors and journalists have been quoted as widely as Michael Pollan (b. 1955), whose insights reach well beyond their original context. Michael Pollan's observations on Food are as sharp as their thoughts on Science, revealing genuine breadth of mind. 22 of Michael Pollan's sharpest quotes live here, spanning themes of Food, Science, Relationship, Politics, and Nature. Among their most shared lines: "I mean, we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification."

“Fairness forces you - even when you're writing a piece highly critical of, say, genetically modified food, as I have done - to make sure you represent the other side as extensively and as accurately as you possibly can.”

— Michael Pollan

Food

All Quotes by Michael Pollan

“I mean, we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification.”

— Michael Pollan

Relationship

“Perhaps more than any other, the food industry is very sensitive to consumer demand.”

— Michael Pollan

Food

“High-quality food is better for your health.”

— Michael Pollan

Diet

“Every major food company now has an organic division. There's more capital going into organic agriculture than ever before.”

— Michael Pollan

Food

“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.”

— Michael Pollan

Gardening

“Fairness forces you - even when you're writing a piece highly critical of, say, genetically modified food, as I have done - to make sure you represent the other side as extensively and as accurately as you possibly can.”

— Michael Pollan

Food

“Corn is an efficient way to get energy calories off the land and soybeans are an efficient way of getting protein off the land, so we've designed a food system that produces a lot of cheap corn and soybeans resulting in a lot of cheap fast food.”

— Michael Pollan

Food

“My work has also motivated me to put a lot of time into seeking out good food and to spend more money on it.”

— Michael Pollan

Food

“In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel - it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn.”

— Michael Pollan

Food

“The big journals and Nobel laureates are the equivalent of Congressional leaders in science journalism.”

— Michael Pollan

Science

“People in Slow Food understand that food is an environmental issue.”

— Michael Pollan

Environmental

“A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.”

— Michael Pollan

Nature

“The things journalists should pay attention to are the issues the political leadership agrees on, rather than to their supposed antagonisms.”

— Michael Pollan

Leadership

“At home I serve the kind of food I know the story behind.”

— Michael Pollan

Food

“In general, science journalism concerns itself with what has been published in a handful of peer-reviewed journals - Nature, Cell, The New England Journal of Medicine - which set the agenda.”

— Michael Pollan

Science

“Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more than finding a funny way to phrase something.”

— Michael Pollan

Funny

“The larger meaning here is that mainstream journalists simply cannot talk about things that the two parties agree on this is the black hole of American politics.”

— Michael Pollan

Politics

“For at the same time many people seem eager to extend the circle of our moral consideration to animals, in our factory farms and laboratories we are inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history.”

— Michael Pollan

History

“In corn, I think I've found the key to the American food chain. If you look at a fast-food meal, a McDonald's meal, virtually all the carbon in it - and what we eat is mostly carbon - comes from corn.”

— Michael Pollan

Food